Noriko Pon was born in 1944 in the steel town of Muroran in Hokkaido. As a
young child, she says her teacher was the natural scenery of the nearby Itanki
coastline. Intending to become a journalist she attended Kyoto University but,
during the campus disturbances of the 60's, she became disillusioned and left.

Throughout her life, chance meetings
and fateful coincidences redirected her life path.

In 1968, Pon's life was radically
changed when she happened to see some pottery work by Moto Kato of the Miyano
kiln in Seto. She was deeply impressed, and immediately applied to become his
student. Though abruptly turned down, she apprenticed herself to a kiln in Tanba
in near-by Kyoto. She lived in the workshop grounds there, doing whatever odd
jobs needed done, such as making flower vases, and through that hard work she
developed initial self-confidence and strength as a potter.

Putting all her things into two
cardboard boxes and forwarding them to the Miyano studio, Pon again knocked
on Kato's door, who, greeting her this time with a smile, allowed her to
join and undergo her apprenticeship in the craft of ceramics.

After four years Pon felt herself
coming to a stang-still so, once again, she resumed her journey of self-discovery.
This time it took her to the American continent.

Producing no work at first, but
having determined that to be a great artist she must first find herself, she
nonetheless continued her wanderings there, eventually bringing her to Mexico.
There, under a brilliant sun whose gentle light softens both soil and people's
hearts, Noriko Pon slowly unfolded.

Having become deeply captivated
by the rich and serene life of Mexico's indigenous culture, as well as by
its mindset imbued with the magic of gods of protection, spirits and demons,
Pon first enrolled in 1974 in the Esmeralda University of Art, followed this
with a stay in 1977 in an Indio town in southern Oaxaca, and ending up in 1980
as head pottery instructor at Benito Juarez University's art department,
teaching Japanese ceramic technique.

In Mexico, yet another fateful
occurrence. There, Pon became enchanted by the snail-shell purple colour used
in the dying of traditional textiles made by the indigenous Mixteca tribe. Her
focus now was on deepening her friendship with Mixtecans and that mysterious
shell-purple of theirs. This time also marks the starting point of her dream
to someday establish a museum presenting the snail-shell purple artifacts she
was avidly collecting, the indigenous culture that produced them, and her own
creations due to their influence. In particular, Pon acknowledges her debt as
an artist to her students and their work in preserving their indigenous cultures.

In 1985, the year of the great
earthquake in Mexico, Pon left. However, she continually revisits what she calls
her other home and the source of her vitality as a potter.

Back in Japan, she moved around
continuing to develop her work until, in 1986, she moved to Ishigaki (Okinawa),
a place which remined her of Mexico's natural scenery and where she established
a Yaeyama-Miyano kiln. There, Pon produced countless pottery murals and such
for, among others, a kindergarten, an elementary school, a harbour terminal,
and a library. And in all her works she incorporates not only clay from the
area but also the local history and culture as a way of acknowledging with gratitude
earth's sustaining role for humanity.

Case in point, the kindergarteners who are always touching and playing the
mural Pon made for them. Some people find this odd. Pon says otherwise: gChildren
sense the power that earth emits, and they know that our hearts and the mural
are happy to be near each other." She adds further that: "Kneading
clay or playing with mud are the same as playing with the earth. Both the soil
and our hands can feel each other's energy. Soil has a power to attract people."

After her parents in Hokkaido
died, she wondered what purpose her life had. Around that time, she gots a commission
from Yubari, a coal mining town, to do a piece from coal and shale. Pleased
with the scenery of the area, in 1993 she opened the kiln Yuparu-Miyano in the
remains of a coal-mine in Yubari. There, she produced many works, including
a monument made from shale for a local inn, a ceramic mural for the Yuparo bath-house,
and the trophy handed out during the Yubari International Film Festival.

Around this time too, she produced the ceramic mural "Plaza Mu" for
NHK's Muroran broadcasting office, thereby setting off a nostalgia boom for
large ceramic murals. Also from this time, when our centre had no more space
and she was visiting Ebetsu to investigate clay-bricks, she made a Christmas
present for the centre's children made of clay-bricks and called "Forest
music squad". Indeed, using clay-bricks for producing pottery-work was
unheard of, hence the present exhibit of her work here in Ebetsu.

In 1998, the Pon-Miyano kiln opened in Shimizu (Tokachi). Her pen-name "Pon"
is an Ainu word that means small and endearing. The kiln is directly opposite
both an elementary school and a mentally-disabled school called Asahiyama Gakuen.
Pon states that: "The students' voices and shapes meld into the natural
scenery." Pon also began teaching pottery at Asahiyama Gakuen and Shimizu
High School. Students, and later, in 1999, produced among other works a fairy-based
mural for the "Freude Lounge" of Shimizu town's hot-bath and a school
gate for the Asahiyama Gakuen.

In 2000, Pon produced, among other
pieces, ceramic murals for both Mexico City's TAO Hospital and Toluca city's
MOA Art School, thus expanding her fruitful colaboration with the Miyano kiln.
Indeed, after the end of this exhibition, Pon will resume her travels to Mexico
to complete not only a large mural in progress there, but also to give birth
to more of her beloved clay children as well as to visit additional new lands.